Axe Cliffs and Under Hooken

On a couple of occasions when the sun showed itself in the last week or so I went for a wander along the cliff tops to the east of Axmouth and and also had a look in the Under Hooken  to see if any Small Blues had emerged yet. I didn't see any but I expect they're going to bit a bit later this year so there's still lots of time. In fact I'm going again today as the forecast is very favourable.

Axe Cliff

An impressive carpet of Bugle with Beer Head in distance.

The bugle was very popular with several of these....

Dark-edged Bee-fly( Bombylius major)

which proved very tricky to photograph in flight.

This one's not very sharp but it shows the way that the fly sometimes grasps the tiny flower with all six legs. It also shows the length of that proboscis!

Cowslip

 Early Purple Orchid

Most of the Orchids on this site are pretty stunted like these. If you look closely there is a spider on her web between the two flower spikes.

Male Orange Tip

A stunning 'brand new' Peacock.

Under Hooken

 The only butterfly I saw was a Dingy Skipper. I think this is the first one I've ever photographed on a flower.

 Green Fairy Long-horns (Adela reaumurella) were much in evidence though. 

This is the female....

....and the male. 

The Purple Gromwell was out and looking as lovely as ever, lots more of it this year too. I expect benefiting from the very wet spring we've been having so far.

Female Nursery Web Spider (Pisaura mirabilis). Lovely, isn't she?

A couple of new plants for me that I spotted in my lawn.

This is Thyme-leaved Speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia) a very common grassland plant but extremely small flowered (about 4mm across) which is probably why I haven't really noticed it before.

Field Woodrush (Luzula campestris) also called Good Friday Grass and again a very common species, which I just haven't really taken any notice of I guess.

Oh, what a surprise! It's raining again and blowing a hoolie... fine sunny day they said. Pah! I suppose it will clear up late afternoon just in time for me to go to work, which seems to have been the pattern of late.